Carl and Mary Raymond spend weeks decorating their home and boat for the Christmas holidays. Thousands of lights, penguins and bears are part of the decorations as Newport Beach celebrates it's 100th anniversary for it's boat parade.

David and Barbara Hoffman applaud the passing of a boat during the Parade of Boats in December 2001 in Newport Beach.

Hundreds of penguins are part of the Christmas decorations at Mary Raymond's home in Newport Beach.

John Granath puts up Christmas decorations in Mary Raymond's home in preparation for the Newport Beach Boat Parade. Granath is the captain of the boat.

NEWPORT BEACH – Gay Wassall-Kelly was just 10 years old when she first saw the small boats cruising around the Newport Harbor, with just a few lights strung to give a sparkle to the water.

“To see something like this, having come from the San Fernando Valley, it was like magic,” she said, thinking back to that time decades ago.

The idea started in 1908 when a gondolier decided to tie lights to his boat and a few canoes to promote his business and the growing area. Incorporated just two years earlier in 1906, Newport Beach had plenty of empty space that real-estate agents were trying to showcase.

The original parade happened in summer months, usually when the full moon was out for optimal viewing and high tides that allowed the boats to get through the shallow harbor.

“They’d have candles, then noisy generators,” Wassall-Kelly said. “They’d have four or five strings of lights, that’s it. Most of the boats were smaller sailboats and little dinghies.”

In the early years, the parade was known as the “Tournament of Lights,” a knock off the Tournament of Roses Parade. Many people living in the Pasadena and Los Angeles areas were flocking to Newport to buy second summer homes.

The parade stopped for a few years during the Depression and World War II, said Richard Luehrs, chief executive of the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce, which puts on the event.

“There were people watching for attacks from our enemies along the shoreline,” he said. “The last thing we wanted to do was light up the harbor, so it was dark in those years.”

Longtime resident Bettie Schock remembers sitting on her family’s porch on the Balboa Peninsula in 1946, watching one lit-up barge with a choir group pass by and entertain bayfront residents.

Schock, now 88, never would have thought the small-scale boat parade would have turned into the elaborate show seen today.

“I never realized it would develop into such a beautiful boat parade,” she said. “It grew each year into something that was quite great.”

Through the years, the parade started getting longer and longer, with more boats following each other and navigating through the waters.

Because it competed with the Fourth of July boat parade, the light parade was switched over to Christmastime. It wasn’t until 1948 that the official Newport Harbor Christmas Boat Parade started, Luehrs said.

“The ’50s were just as magical as it is now,” Wassall-Kelly said. “It was a more simple time. It’s just as exciting, but just in a different way, in the 21st century.”

These days, more than a hundred boats deck out their vessels for the parade. There’s dancing Santas on decks, and one boater even has a Web site, d25.org, dedicated to his design.

Some boaters spend thousands of dollars and months of preparation on their vessels. More than 1 million visitors come to watch the parade over the five days.

“It wouldn’t be Christmas without participating in it. We still want to be part of the celebration. Being on a boat gives you a totally different perspective of all the festivities,” Deb Woodams said.

Laylan Connelly started as a journalist in 2002 after earning a degree in journalism from the University of Southern California. Through the years, she has covered several cities for The Orange County Register, starting as a beat reporter in Irvine before focusing on coastal cities such as Newport Beach, Dana Point and Laguna Beach. In 2007, she was selected for a prestigious Knight New Media fellowship focusing on digital media at the UC Berkley, where she learned skills to adapt to the ever-changing online landscape. Using a web-based approach, she turned her love for the ocean into a full-time gig as the paper’s beaches reporter. The unique beat allows her to delve into coastal culture by covering everything from the countless events dotting the 42 miles of coastline, to the business climate of the surf industry, to the fascinating wildlife that shows up on the shores. Most importantly, she takes pride in telling stories of the people who make the beaches so special, whether they are surfers using the ocean to heal, or the founders of major surf brands who helped spawn an entire culture, or people who tirelessly fight to keep the coast pristine and open for all to enjoy. She’s a world traveler who loves to explore the slopes during winter months or exotic surf spots around the globe. When she’s not working, or maybe while she's researching a story, you can find her longboarding at her favorite surf spots at San Onofre or Doheny.

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